Bug with spell durations or caster levels??

[Elfishski]

Currently playing through epics, finding that a large portion of the time I cast spells they're much shorter duration than they should be. e.g.
Divine Energy Resistance lasting 10 minutes instead of 56 (extended level 28)
Animal growth at 1:30 instead of 4:50ish... but sometimes somewhere in-between like 2:30
Freedom of movement 10 minutes instead of 32 minutes
etc.

Doesn't seem to happen while buffing at the start of quests, so I'm guessing it's something reactive in combat that's interfering with the spell duration. I've had it all through epics with all different equipment so I don't think it's equipment related.

It's a messy hireling buffing build with a lot of temporary things going on and abilities I wouldn't normally use so I'm wondering if anyone else has ideas on the exact cause before I bug report it or test by removing each of the possible candidates I can think of.
Druid 11 (blood moon frenzy in tier 2 of nature's warrior)
Warlock 5 (tier 5 enlightened spirit, all the hireling buffs and defensive stuff and aura)
Bard 4 (tier 4 warchanter, arcane shield chant, ironskin chant, reckless chant, inspire courage)
Harper agent for remaining 11APs

Primal Avatar ED, Summer Smoke, Autumn Harvest, Chill of Winter, Supple as Spring, Ephemeral Evolution, core things Strength of Spirit and Eternal Return
Twist: Echoes of the Ancestors: Fury of the Wild adding to inspire courage?


I notice that while casting e.g. bard spells, if I hover over the tooltip of druid spells the spell duration changes as if it was being cast with bard caster levels instead, so I'm guessing something that's happening during combat is being treated as a spell cast by a zero caster level spellcaster so actual spells cast at the same time are cast with caster level of 0 and default to the base duration.

I thought ephemeral evolution would be most likely, but it seems to happen even when that isn't actually active... maybe something to do with spirit accumulation? or intimidate which I use constantly?.... anyone else had experience of this?

Obviously if it is a bug with caster levels rather than just duration and I was casting DC spells instead of buffs this would be more problematic.

[EllisDee37]

I have a faint memory of some kind of weirdness with summer smoke. I can't for the life of me remember the details, so I can't say it's even related to buff duration. But if you're looking for stuff to test, I'd try switching out summer smoke.

Actually, it sounds like you're in primal. Maybe just switch to a martial destiny active just for an initial quick/cheap/easy test?

[Elfishski]

I have a faint memory of some kind of weirdness with summer smoke. I can't for the life of me remember the details, so I can't say it's even related to buff duration. But if you're looking for stuff to test, I'd try switching out summer smoke.

Actually, it sounds like you're in primal. Maybe just switch to a martial destiny active just for an initial quick/cheap/easy test?

So some more testing in a wilderness area switching things on and off...

Seems that when the warlock Eldritch Aura damages an enemy (not when it just activates and renews the buffs), it also sets the caster level of the character for all classes to be equal to the warlock caster lever for the next spell cast/ability activated.

So with aura active, I stand next to an enemy, then if I don't do anything else:
- all my spell durations for bard spells increase slightly (level 4 to level 5, e.g. rage goes from 2 minutes 48 second to 3 minute duration (yay))
- all my spell durations for warlock spells (e.g. invisibility) stay the same
- all my spell durations for druid spells decrease from caster level 16 to caster level 5 (e.g. FOM going from 32 mins to 10 mins)
- epic SLAs such as Divine Energy Resistance also act as if caster level 5 instead of character level (going from 56 mins to 10 mins)

As soon as I cast any spell (which does cast at the changed character level), or activate an ability like intimidate, then it resets the caster level to be correct for all spells.


Anyone else out there with a warlock ES multiclass to test if this is generally true and not just a weird interaction on my build (I'm Fey Pact if it makes any difference)?

I bet if you have a lot of warlock levels and just a few of some other caster, this bug could helping other builds e.g. magic missile max procs on those warlock zombie shiradi builds, if it is generally true...

[Cocomajobo]

Read by QA!

[Capricorpus]

So some more testing in a wilderness area switching things on and off...

Seems that when the warlock Eldritch Aura damages an enemy (not when it just activates and renews the buffs), it also sets the caster level of the character for all classes to be equal to the warlock caster lever for the next spell cast/ability activated.

So with aura active, I stand next to an enemy, then if I don't do anything else:
- all my spell durations for bard spells increase slightly (level 4 to level 5, e.g. rage goes from 2 minutes 48 second to 3 minute duration (yay))
- all my spell durations for warlock spells (e.g. invisibility) stay the same
- all my spell durations for druid spells decrease from caster level 16 to caster level 5 (e.g. FOM going from 32 mins to 10 mins)
- epic SLAs such as Divine Energy Resistance also act as if caster level 5 instead of character level (going from 56 mins to 10 mins)

As soon as I cast any spell (which does cast at the changed character level), or activate an ability like intimidate, then it resets the caster level to be correct for all spells.


Anyone else out there with a warlock ES multiclass to test if this is generally true and not just a weird interaction on my build (I'm Fey Pact if it makes any difference)?

I bet if you have a lot of warlock levels and just a few of some other caster, this bug could helping other builds e.g. magic missile max procs on those warlock zombie shiradi builds, if it is generally true...

I can confirm that it isn't just you. This has been a bug ever since warlock was released.